


Just A Little Girl

by Severina



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: tamingthemuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 08:56:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble Quintet.  Five different POV's on the search for / discovery of Sophia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just A Little Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's tamingthemuse community, for the prompt 'hopelessness'
> 
> * * *

Rick is sweat-soaked and exhausted when he stumbles his way through the underbrush at the side of the road, hauling himself up the embankment with the last of his strength. His right shoulder twinges, and he blinks past the memory of lifting the rock high above his head to hit the walker, of splintered bone, blood and brain matter splaying in the grass. His eyes dart anxiously over the gathered group.

Sophia is not among them.

When Carol’s knees buckle and she goes down, Rick sways on his feet. 

His fault, he sees in her eyes. His fault, he believes.

* * *

T-Dog has no experience with kids. Especially little kids. Especially little girls. He has no idea how their crazy little brains work, or how they figure shit out. But he knows how he’d fare if he got lost in the woods, and that is: not fucking good.

He wants to be out there helping. Not stuck at the farm, head sometimes spinning with the fever still burning through him, gulping down antibiotics that used to belong to some loud-mouthed racist motherfucker. 

Each passing day, the fever burns hotter and the light in the eyes of the returning searchers gets dimmer.

* * *

This isn’t the world that Andrea wants, but if she must live in it she is determined to succeed at all costs. That means becoming proficient with a weapon, becoming self-sufficient. That means standing up for what she believes. It means doing what’s right.

She truly believes that Sophia may still be alive. Kids are more resilient than people give them credit for. Craftier, too.

Then they come across the slaughter in the new housing development. Reality comes crashing in, stealing away all her optimism. 

That night, she creeps into Shane’s tent. She tries to regain hope in his arms.

* * *

Shane stalks away from the crumpled bodies, swipes a shaking hand over his jaw.

He said it. He said it time and again – after seventy-two hours the chances are you’re looking for a body, not a living breathing human being. It’s what they were taught; it’s what they experienced when they got farmed out to Atlanta for additional training. He knew it. Hell, Rick knew it.

But knowing it and seeing it are two very different things.

She was just a kid, for fucks sake.

And he watched her lurch out of that damn barn, and couldn’t do a thing.

* * *

“We’re gonna find that little girl,” Daryl had said.

“We’ll find her,” Andrea had reassured her.

“We’ll find her. We will,” Carol herself had repeated. Over and over.

And when the barn doors opened, they did find her.

Carol sits numbly at the table. Sometimes she can feel Daryl’s eyes on her, silently questioning. She doesn’t speak. She’s afraid she’d rage. 

At Daryl, for giving her false hope. At herself, for believing. 

At God, who answered her prayers for Ed’s death by sending walkers to their camp. At God, who delivered her child back to her as a rotting corpse.


End file.
